


Overcorrection

by magykal_fangirl



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, AvaLance, Bisexual Character, F/F, Fluff, Lesbian Character, aaaaaaaaaa, bear with me this one's gonna be super long, even if it's bad, gay shit, i haven't even watched all of legends so don't @me, i'm open for beta readers, idk how this is gonna go, is it bear with me or bare with me, probably, so like pls read it, updates will happen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 01:04:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17214128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magykal_fangirl/pseuds/magykal_fangirl
Summary: avalance high school au | there will be pining | multiple perspectives but all third person | there is an ace character but it's a surprise | it has a deeper message i promise | if u like it pls comment | ava's a closet nerd | so is sara tbh | they are both struggling with their identities | this will include cameos of stuff that i've done | don't worry, it's properly capitalized and the paragraphs are relatively short | if there's an issue or a typo feel free to tell me | this is mostly self indulgent





	Overcorrection

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this first part awhile ago and it is somewhat beta read  
> i'm only posting it now cuz idk what to do with it

overcorrect | verb | over·cor·rect | \ˌō-vər-kə-ˈrekt  \ Definition of overcorrect 

: to make too much of a correction : to adjust too much in attempting to offset an error, miscalculation, or problem

Sometimes we take people’s expectations of us, we take every single stereotype, assumption, insult, and we warp them so much we become the complete opposite of them, even if that’s not who we are. We see the stereotype as bad, as evil, as  _ not who we should be _ and we crush any little bit inside of us that’s like it. 

If you were to be wandering the streets of Star City at three in the morning, you would see four lights on. One would be the house of Franklin Morden, the city’s very own writer (not that anyone knew it yet — most of his words ended up in the recycling center and exactly zero of them had gone to the public). Mr. Morden lived in an apartment, his room four floors up, and he kept every single one of his lights on at all hours of the night. He never came out of his room except for groceries and the occasional coffee, for he worked at home and lived off his parents’ money. He hadn’t known his neighbors since he’d moved it.

The second and third lights you’d see would be the two 24/7 fast food places, their lights stark and flickery against the darkness of the night. The people who worked there at that time kept only one light on inside, the food preparers preferring to work in the dark. They slept from six in the morning til three in the afternoon, if they were lucky. Some were college students with no constant sleep schedule, sleeping whenever there was a free moment. The adults let them rest in the darkness of the kitchen when the restaurant wasn’t busy.

The fourth light that was on at three am on this early Friday morning was a small lamp, barely bright enough to see from the outside. The girl who sat at it was frantically working on a packet, studying for her history test, tensing her knuckles whenever she didn’t know an answer. Her name was Ava Sharpe. She’d forgotten about the test amidst the other ten billion things she’d had going on until eleven pm when Gary Green had texted her, asking her for help on the test review packet. She’d cursed, flicked on her light, and gone downstairs to get her backpack. Unfortunately, she, like many teenagers, forgot that the best study method ever was sleep. But it was okay. Ava was smart. But she would definitely regret this in the morning.

A fifth light came on as the sun rose with a “shit, fuckin’ hell“. It wasn’t too far from one of the fast food places, but it was quite far from Mr. Morden’s apartment and separated from the Sharpes’ house by the high school. The reasons for the profanities included the history test, a nasty bruise, and general exhaustion. Sara Lance, the girl who had uttered them, rubbed her eyes and groaned into the morning. Her window faced east, so when the sun got up, she got up, unless she remembered to close the blinds. She usually didn’t. She put on her sunglasses, letting out a sigh of relief at the better lighting. The Spotify playlist she’d put on was still playing so she paused it and opened Instagram. She lazily flipped through some of her friends’ stories and liked a few posts before resorting to the safety of her private account. Private as in  _ not for you _ .

Ava woke up at six am sharp every morning without fail. Her phone had an alarm on it that blared loud and she chucked it across the room every night before she went to bed. It was like a puzzle that her half dead brain had to figure out and by the time it had, she was usually awake enough to reason that she couldn’t just go back to sleep. This morning, the side of her brain that was protesting for sleep almost won out. She clambered for her phone and attempted to unlock it. It took four tries of her finger before it asked for her passcode and she lazily typed that in, having to hit delete at least twice. She finally got it unlocked so she opened up Instagram and flipped through all the stories, her finger tapping on the right side of the screen as quickly as possible. Then, she scrolled through the posts on her dash, liking anything from her friends. When she got to the “You’re All Caught Up” message, she scrolled back up to the top and reloaded. Thankfully there were no more posts or stories so she closed out of the app. Why she even had it she didn’t know ― it caused her way too much stress ― but she was sure if she deleted it she’d lose all contact with any of her friends besides Gary.

Ava made sure to wake up at six every morning because it gave her a whole hour to get showered and dressed and make her lunch and eat breakfast which sounded like a lot of work to a sleep-deprived brain. She sat on her bed, with her phone on and unlocked and no apps opened, and swiped through the three screens. Middle screen, right screen, back to middle screen, left screen, middle, left, middle, right, middle, left, and on and on and on. After about twenty seconds of doing this, she’d convinced her brain that taking a shower was absolutely necessary.

She did what she did every morning, by giving her brain specific instructions. 

  1. Get a shirt, a bra, underwear, and jeans
  2. Go to the closet and get a towel
  3. Go to the bathroom and close the door
  4. Turn on the water
  5. When it’s the right temperature, turn on the shower
  6. etc, etc.



If she didn’t do it that way, nothing would ever get done. It had taken her awhile to figure out how to work with her scrambled brain, but she’d done it and now she was a master at it. If only she could major in doing normal, everyday tasks in a timely manner. But alas.

She was eating breakfast when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Her whole body flinched even though she assured herself that it was just her dad. 

“Good morning,” he said in the cheeriest voice anybody had ever heard at six thirty in the morning.

Ava hummed in acknowledgement and hoped her dad would understand.

He seemed to get the memo, thank god. It was too early and she was too tired for any sort of human interaction. Mornings were quite possibly the worst thing and having to share them with other  _ people _ only worsened the situation. Her dad walked over to her and clapped his hand down onto her shoulder. She shivered.

“Long night?” he asked and she hummed again in assent. “Like I’ve said, it’s always okay if you get a ‘B’. Don’t sacrifice your health for something as stupid as school.”

Ava let out a stuttered sigh. She coughed a few times and cleared her throat, praying for her voice to come out somewhat okay.

“School isn’t stupid, it’s what’s going to get me into college. And don’t you dare say college is stupid.”

Her dad raised his hands in defence and Ava let out air she didn’t know she had been holding. She went back to eating her cereal and her dad wandered into the kitchen to get coffee. Why was he even down here? Usually, Ava was alone downstairs in the hour before she had to leave to drive to school. It was nice to have time to herself before submitting herself to the terror that was high school. It gave her time to think. It also gave her time to wind up the gears in her brain and make it ready for coming up with responses to other humans.

She ate the rest of her cereal as fast as possible and cleaned it up on autopilot, then raced up the stairs back to her room. She opened up Instagram on her phone again, disappointed but slightly relieved when there were only two stories she hadn’t watched yet. She quickly flipped through them then closed out of the app. Her messages app had four notifications. They hadn’t shown up on the lock screen, which was odd, but then again, phones were dumb. She opened it and read them all ― one from Zari, three from Gary ― and debated responding to them. She had read receipts turned off, so they would never know she had actually read them, and she had no idea how to respond in a way she couldn’t when she got to school. She shared second period with Zari and though the first class she and Gary were both in was lunch, his texts didn’t warrant a quick response.

She’d been checking the time every couple minutes and the time had gone slowly which was good in a way but also frustrating because when would it just be time to go? Finally the time on her phone had switched from six forty nine to six fifty, so she hopped out of bed, slipped on a sweatshirt, made sure to grab her phone and earbuds, and went downstairs. Her dad had left, leaving the front door unlocked and the good car gone. Where he was going, Ava didn’t know, but she didn’t care if it meant not having to make conversation with him. It  _ was _ , however, unfortunate that he’d taken the good car. Ava didn’t like the bad car, for it was, well, bad.

Seven o’clock came and Ava shot out of her seat on the couch and left the house. She made sure to lock the door and triple check that she had everything. It was too often that she forgot a sheet of homework or her best pencil, left laying on her desk, so close yet just out of reach. Her phone alarm went off and she didn’t even have to look at it to know what it said. She opened the notes section of her phone and clicked on one that said “Don’t Forget!!” Phone? Check. Earbuds? Check. Spare money? Check. Keys? Check. 

::::

Some people might say that taking the bus when you’re seventeen was a sign of weakness. Where they got that idea, no one knows, because, at least for Sara, taking the bus at seventeen had given her a free ride to school every morning and time to think.

Sara always liked to move. She was always racing around, from one thing to the next, never stopping to look around. She did look around ― she had an expert eye for detail ― however she didn’t feel like stopping was necessary to the process. She felt that anyone in front of her was moving too slow and any speed she was going she could go faster than it. Being on the bus for an hour every morning was calming and good. Sometimes she’d stare at the window, with her music blaring through her earbuds, watching the trees whoosh past.

Sometimes it felt like she had more thoughts than others. They were always present, always racing, always alive and bursting. She had to fight to stay focused amidst them. Her mind was always on at least four topics at a time, and sometimes it was the conversation at hand that was on the backburner. That led to far too many things out of her mouth that were best left buried deep down but most of the time she had a quick cover up. 

“Sara!”

She was dragged out of her mind by the voice of Amaya Jiwe.

“How dare you disrupt my slumber?” she said, her voice booming, and Amaya shook her head letting out a giggle.

“Oh, I beg of thee to forgive my error,” Amaya responded, voice just as strong, and Sara had to fight to keep her face serious. She went back to her normal voice. “Anyways, you need to get up. We’re here.”

She pointed out the opposite window. Sara let out a little “oh” of surprise and gathered her stuff together to leave. The bus aisle was narrow, too narrow to easily get through without bonking into a seat and too often Sara found herself bonking into a  _ person _ which was unfortunate. The magnitude of all the shit she had to carry just to go through a normal day of high school was insane; her backpack alone barely fit between her legs and the seat in front of her on the bus. She was required to carry her Physics textbook around with her everyday, because most of the class and homework was out of it. That alone was massive, and yet Sara managed to fit a couple books and her binder alongside it.

The first class of the day was always the most frustrating. It felt too long and Sara’s sleep deprived brain fought to interpret all the information being thrown at her. Unfortunately for her, the most important thing she had to worry about today was the history test in third period. She couldn’t very well study in second period  _ band _ , so she had to make do with studying during math. At least she understood the material. 

The studying consisted of reading through the notes she’d taken throughout the unit and filling out the review guide. Of course, that meant flipping back and forth between her math and history sections of her binder. And hiding the fact that she was doing another class’s work during math. Her teacher would freak if he found out. 

The classes at her school were each forty five minutes long, not counting the transition times between classes. Forty five minutes was an eternity in English and a small second of time in math when she  _ needed to study _ . The bell rang before she knew it and she was left with one front and back page of the review guide blank. As she was putting it away, her teacher, passing out homework, saw it and shook his head. She smiled what she hoped was a sympathetic smile and shrugged. He just walked on. 

Band dragged on for what felt like forever and every moment she was in that class not doing the review guide was a moment in which she felt slightly more frustrated. Sara played the saxophone. She played it purely because her fourth grade band had been desperately in need of one, but now she loved it and wouldn’t stray. She loved when she played and heard the clear tone from it. She knew she could be good at it if she tried harder, but the class was boring and the music didn’t interest her. It would be nice if they could play actual songs they’d heard of in class, but no, marches by obscure composers it was.

“I swear I’m going to drop this class,” she whispered to Zari. Zari played the trumpet but she sat directly behind Sara and they’d gotten good at talking without drawing suspicion from the teacher. It helped that neither of them sat in the front row and that Mr. Cassidy was talking to one of the clarinets.

“You’ve said that everyday since the beginning of freshman year,” Zari pointed out. “I’m beginning to doubt it.”

Sara sighed. “Well this year I’m really going to do it,” she said, and Zari still wasn’t convinced but she dropped the subject.

“Oh!” she said, perhaps a bit too loud. The first clarinet turned to glare at her. She grinned and waved but continued in a lower voice. “About your text. Sorry I didn’t respond, but yes, I can definitely come to your party.”

“Oh, good.”

Mr. Cassidy went back up to the front of the room and stepped onto his conductor platform so they stopped talking. It didn’t stop Sara from fingerspelling L U N C H to her friend however. She looked back at her, pretending to look at the clock, and saw her nod. 

**Author's Note:**

> pls comment even if it's just to say "yo, i read this and this is a comment"  
> i will hopefully update soon


End file.
